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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 




CHILDHOOD 



AND 



CONVERSION. 



By Geo. G/Smith, D.D., 

Of the North Georgia Conference. 



"Forbid ///cm ?/o/" 









SUNDAY-SCHOOL DEPARTMENT. 



Publishing House of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. 

Barbeb & Smith. Agents, Nashville, Tenn. 

1891. 






^f 

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Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1890, 

By the Book Agents of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



EDITORIAL NOTE. 



The pastoral care of children is enjoined by the di- 
rect command of Christ, who said to Peter, and 
through him to every minister of the gospel, "Feed 
my lambs? Children form a large part of our religious 
communities, and by far the most impressible and 
hopeful part. No minister, therefore, who would 
-make full proof of his ministry/' can neglect them. 

Our Church recognizes children as a part of the pas- 
tor's charge, and makes it his duty to u speak to them 
personally and kindly on experimental and practical 
godliness, according to their capacity; pray earnestly 
for them, and cause them to be faithfully instructed in 
the nature, design, pri\ileges, and obligations of their 
baptism;" and "as soon as they comprehend the re- 
sponsibilities inyolyed in a public profession of faith 
in Christ, and giye eyidence of a sincere and earnest 
determination to discharge the same, see that they be 
duly recognized as members of the Church, agreeably 
to the proyision of the Discipline." (See Discipline, 
page 126.) 

Public preaching from the pulpit to children is a 
duty which no minister of the gospel can safely or con- 
sistently neglect. " Upon what plea can he justify 
himself in addressing his words of inyitation and coun- 
sel chiefly to the comparatiyely hopeless minority of 
adults, to the neglect of an obyiously more hopeful 
majority of impressible children?" 

Mr. Wesley preached often to the children, and 
required his preachers to do the same. The sainted 

(3) 



4 Editorial JVote. 

Fletcher made a specialty of preaching to the children 
of his parish. In the eighteenth century there were 
wonderful revivals among children in Germany, un- 
der the preaching of Count Zinzendorf. Jonathan 
Edwards witnessed marvelous results of public preach- 
ing upon the children of his day, and records instances 
of remarkable conversions of children under ten years 
of age. 

Many of our successful pastors and preachers in 
modern limes have given special attention to the chil- 
dren of their congregations, and great results have fol- 
lowed. Not only have multitudes of children been 
converted and brought into the Church, but the reviv- 
als beginning with them have spread through the con- 
gregations, and many adults have been saved as the 
"fruits of the children's revival." 

The author of the following admirable treatise is ex- 
tensively known as "The Children's Preacher. " He 
has given the best days of more than twenty-five vears 
to the study of childhood and the best methods of 
teaching and preaching to children in view of bring- 
ing them to Christ. He has given us in this little 
book his maturest thoughts on the subject, and the 
results of a wide and varied experience. We are not 
sui prised, therefore, to find it, without question, the 
best thing we have yet seen from his facile and pro- 
lific pen. We take pleasure in placing the seal of edi- 
torial indorsement upon it, and in recommending it 
to all parents, Sunday-school teachers, pastors, and 
others interested in the religious training of children. 

W. G. E. CUNNYNGHAM, 

vSunday-school Editor. 
Nashville, Tenn., Nov., 1S90. 



INTRODUCTION. 



FEW men known to me have given a8 constant and 
intelligent attention to religion in its relation to chil- 
dren as the author of this little book, which the wise 
will judge by its matter, not its size. His experience 
as child, father, and preacher fits him to be a teacher 
on the subject he now urges upon the conscience of 
the Church. His father was an earnest Christian, his 
mother a holy woman, both of them known to me near- 
ly forty years ago. Back of them was an ancestry of 
godly people; parents and grandparents have blessed 
him with what is good in heredity, and in him they also 
are blessed. My friend's parents believed in religious 
children, and George, very naturally in the divine or- 
der of life, was converted when a very little boy. 

As occasion made it wise, the author has been preach- 
ing to children ever since he began; for years past 
his ministry — having many " seals " — has been conse- 
crated to childhood. I have heard him and studied him 
in his children's meetings: they are without a trace of 
fanaticism or folly; they are absolutely free from flip- 
pancy or coarseness; most thoroughly do I believe in 
them. Happy is that community to which this "chil- 
dren's evangelist " is called to preach the gospel! 

(5) 



6 Introduction. 

And it is the gospel — the old, ever-new gospel — he 
preaches. He preaches the same gospel to children we 
all try to preach to the congregation of men and women; 
only he remembers that he is preaching to children. A 
vain man, who mistakes obscurity for depth, who consid- 
ers long words the proof of learning, who is jealous of 
his reputation, should not preach to children until he 
himself is converted; for when a man like this tries to 
preach simply, he becomes silly. 

The author of this book — as " Brother George " he is 
known to thousands of our children, and grown people 
too, converted under his ministry in childhood — preach- 
es the gospel to little people with faith perfect in its 
adaptedness to young life. He preaches it ; a very differ- 
ent thing from explaining it. He knows — by spiritual 
intuition as well as by experiment as scientific in meth- 
od and conclusion as any thing done in the laboratory — 
that religious truth is as normal to the young mind as 
light is to a baby's eye. The young eye distinguishes 
colors before the mind back of it understands optics, 
and the child-spirit responds to the story of Jesus long 
before it can understand words about the plan of salva- 
tion. As to seeing and understanding, John Tyndall 
himself gets the good of his eyes and of light by using 
his eyes, and not because he thinks he comprehends the 
science of seeing. No man, if he knew enough to build 
a perfect creed, was ever yet saved through compre- 



Introduction* 7 

bending doctrine, but through trusting and loving .1 
person — the Lord Jesus Christ. 

May this little bonk go into ever} home, and touch 
the hearts of all who have to do with children! Evan- 
gelical, experimental, spiritual, taught in the Scriptures 
from a child, Methodist and orthodox, we mav safely 
heed what this writer has to say to us concerning our 
duties and the needs of our children. 

We cannot begin too soon — although we begin before 
they are born, which is the best way — to seek the con- 
version of our children. It is easy to begin too late. 
The enemy that " soweth tares while men sleep" is 
himself always awake. Atticus G. Haygood. 

Sheffield, Ala., October n, 1890. 






CONTENTS. 

Ch UPTBR I. Pack 

W) Children Need Conversion? 1 1 

Chapter II. 
The Child Can Repent , 17 

Chapter III. 
A Child Can Have Faith in Jesus 23 

Chapter IV. 
The Spirit's Work on a Child's Heart 30 

Chapter V. 
The Spirit's Witness to a Child's Heart 37 

Chapter VI. 
Some Facts 44 

Chapter VII. 
Some Features of a Child's Religion 52 

Chapter VIII. 

The Importance of the Conversion of Little Chil- 
dren Underrated 59 

Chapter IX. 
Why Important — The Depravity of the Human 
Heart 65 

(9) 



io Contents. 

Chapter X. p A ge 

Why Important — The Wooings of the Spirit and 
1 1 is Work on a Child's Heart 70 

Chapter XI. 
Why Important — Influences Around Children. ... 74 

Chapter XII. 
Whv Important — Habits, Bad and Good 78 

Chapter XIII. 
How to Effect the Conversion of Children — Faith, 
Prayer, Effort 83 

Chapter XIV. 
The Preacher and the Children 88 

Chapter XV. 
The Way to Secure the Conversion of Children in 
Sunday-school Work 97 

Chapter XVI. 
The Way to Secure the Conversion of Children — 
The Family 106 

Chapter XVII. 
Care for the Lambs no 



Childhood and Conversion. 



CHAPTER I. 

DO CHILDREN NEED CONVERSION? 

fHE question, "Do children need con- 
version?" can only be answered by an- 
swering two others: First, What is meant 
by children? and, second, What is meant 
by conversion? I do not mean by chil- 
dren infants who do not know right 
from wrong. They cannot be convert- 
ed, and they are saved if they die. These 
two statements are not likely to be contro- 
verted, and need not be discussed. I mean 
by children those who have reached an 
age when they hear the voice of con- 
science and realize a moral obligation. I 
do not know how early this may be : at three, 
four, or five years old it may be ; at eight or 

en) 



12 Childhood and Conversion. 

ten it nearly always is. When the idea "I 
ought" enters into the child's mind, then he 
is the child of whom I am speaking. His 
idea of obligation may not be very intelli- 
gent nor very advanced, but it is there. 
" They go astray from their birth, speaking 
lies," is sadly true, and there comes a time 
when a little one feels and knows that a lie 
is wrong. They are little socialists who feel 
that all is theirs; but there comes a time 
when the rights of property are recognized. 
A little boy playing in the street, against his 
mother's order, awakens to the fact that he 
has broken God's command by disobedi- 
ence. He knows the law, he knows he has 
broken it. He knows he is a sinner. I can- 
not discuss here the amount of his guilt nor 
the punishment it involves; I simply rec- 
ognize the fact. He has consciously vio- 
lated a known law: he is a sinner. These 
sins may be of ignorance, these sins maybe 
of the infirmity of childhood, but they are 



Do Children Need Conversion} [3 

sins. The first element in conversion is for- 
giveness. The sins to 11s may seem very 
venial, almost too small for notice; they are 
not gross, not specially harmful, but they 
are sins. They indicate a tendency. These 
sins demand and must have forgiveness, and 
this tendency must be corrected. This sin- 
fulness of life, while often hidden from the 
eyes of a partial parent, or excused when it 
is discovered, is never hidden from the child 
himself. The first work of the Spirit is to 
convince one of sin. 

Conversion demands regeneration, and 
the child needs it because it is born with a 
sinward nature, which naturally impels it to- 
ward wrong-doing. I know there is among 
Pelagians and semi-Pelagians a doubt of 
this fact, and I know Roman Catholics and 
Anglo-Catholics claim that the water of 
baptism washes this sinful stain away; but I 
am sure that Article VII. of our Church 
is sustained by the experience of every child 



14 Childhood and Conversion. 

of man who properly reads his own heart. 
This new nature, which hates sin and con- 
quers it, is given to the believer; it is not 
that work of the Holy Spirit which is the 
work of the divine sovereignty, and which 
by the Calvinists is called regeneration, but 
that purifying of the heart by faith which 
comes to him who, having received Jesus as 
the Saviour, has received the gift of the Holy 
Ghost. 

This conversion, presenting these two 
features of pardon for sins and cleansing 
from sin, is possible to a child, and is a nec- 
essary preparation for that Christian life 
which it should lead. We cannot ignore this 
conversion; we must secure it. The carnal 
mind is enmity to God; and while religious 
training and the influences of Christian 
homes and Christian communities may to a 
large extent mitigate this natural tendency 
in young children, yet, unless the child for 
itself accepts the Saviour, and by a volun- 



J)o Children Need Conversion? 15 

tary surrender gives its life to him, and thus 
repenting and believing becomes genuinely 
a Christian, it will never submit itself to the 

control of his law. In another chapter we 

may return to. this subject; here it is suffi- 
cient to assert and enforce two statements: 

1. That the child is a sinner, and needs 
pardon. 

2 . That the child is not by nature inclined 
to obedience to God's law, and needs a 
new nature. 

This pardon granted and this new nat- 
ure given constitute conversion, and it is 
to urge upon all the necessity of securing 
this result that these pages are written. 

The question arises, " Is this possible? 
Can little children, who do not know even 
how to answer intelligently all the questions 
of a short catechism, can these little chil- 
dren be converted?" 

The Catholics, Roman and Anglo, say 
they have been, they are already Christians. 



16 Childhood and Conversion. 

The Unitarian and Rationalist say they do 
not need to be converted; the semi-Pelagian 
says they were born, by virtue of Christ's 
death for them, with capacity to do what 
God demands of them, and do not need 
personal repentance or personal faith to 
bring them into this state; and many, very 
many, say they do need a change of heart, 
and that change of heart cannot come till 
they personally accept Jesus as a Saviour 
and repent of their sins, and this they can- 
not do in early childhood. The question I 
propose to discuss in the next few pages is 
the one suggested here: " Can little chil- 
dren repent and believe the gospel, and 
thus be converted?" Let us see. 




CHAPTER II. 

THE CHILD CAN REPENT. 

i» epentance must precede faith, and 
l\ there can be no genuine conversion 
where repentance is absent. To repent and 
believe the gospel was the Master's teach- 
ing to those to whom he came. " Except 
ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish," he 
said to the Jews at another time. " Repent 
and be converted," said the apostle after his 
resurrection. What did he mean by it? If 
repentance is what the Catholics think it is, 
if it is what Jeremy Taylor thought it was, 
if repentance is what some of the hyper- 
Calvinists think it is, I should at once de- 
spair of a child's repenting. If repentance, 
however, is the knowledge of sin, sorrow 
for sin, and determination to forsake sin, 
then surely there is no difficulty in a child's 
2 (17) 



i8 Childhood and Conversion. 

evangelical repentance. Perhaps if I were 
to ask a little boy of seven years old what 
repentance was, he could not give me a sat- 
isfactory answer; and if he were to ask me 
what it was, I could not give him one. But I 
have only to change my method. Thus: 

"Jimmy, doyou know right from wrong? " 

"Yes, sir." 

" Did you ever do wrong? " 

"Yes, sir; many and many a time." 

"What does the Bible call those who do 
wrong? " 

" Sinners." 

"Are you a sinner?" 

"Yes, sir." 

"Are you sorry that you are? " 

"Yes, sir." 

"Are you willing to quit doing wrong, and 
do right all the time? " 

"Yes, sir." 

" Are you willing to begin now? " 

"Yes, sir." 



The Child Can Repent* 19 

If we allow that these answers arc made 
intelligently and truthfully, I do not suppose 

any Methodist will deny the genuineness 
of the repentance. I would be glad for any 
one to show if there exists a single difficulty 
in the way of a child's genuine penitence. 
Indeed, the possibility of its repentance is 
rendered a certainty if we use the divine 
method. If we flatter the child by telling 
him he is good, when we know and he 
knows he is not, if we excuse him for sins 
for which he does not even excuse himself, 
we may expect nothing but a mere transient 
feeling ; but if we seek to awaken conscience 
and to enlighten the judgment, we may have 
as genuine repentance in a child of six years 
old as in a man of sixty; yet it will be the 
repentance of a child, and will have certain 
features of its own which would cause it to 
differ in some respects from the repentance 
of mature manhood. The sense of guilt 
will be less clear and the consequent unhap- 



20 Childhood and Conversion. 

piness less severe than in adults. The child 
will not feel that he is the worst person in 
the world, and for a thousand things with 
which an adult reproaches himself he will 
have no compunctions, because he is not 
guilty of them. The emotional part of his 
repentance will be marked by none of those 
disturbing features which often naturally at- 
tend that of an adult. I should certainly 
distrust a child's conversion when he evinced 
an utter unconcern about his sinfulness and 
his sins, but I should as much distrust it if I 
were to see the most extravagant manifesta- 
tions of poignant sorrow, and hear him be- 
wailing crimes which I knew he had not com- 
mitted. I should not expect in a child a very 
delicate sense of what is holy ; I think it could 
;arcely be expected that his conscience 
could be as well informed and consequent- 
ly as keenly sensitive as it would be in after 
time; nor should I distrust the sincerity of 
his penitence if I found that after he had 



The ( '////</ ( 'an He pent. 1 1 

promised main- things, very confidently, he 
should not at the first fulfill those promises 

by consistent conduct. To expect a child to 
have the stability and consistency of a man is 
to expect what we have no right to look for. 

A very little boy was playing in the mud, 
against his mother's orders. The father 
asked him how r he came to be so muddy; he 
promptly answered that he fell down. His 
father, at family prayer, the child with him, 
prayed that God would bless his little boy 
and keep him from speaking falsehoods. 
The little boy rose up directly, with tears, 
and said : "I told you a story. I did not fall 
down; I played in the mud."* 

A little girl w T ent from the infant class 
to her mother, and said, weeping: " Las*" 
year I told you a story. I am so sorry.'' 
kiss of forgiveness, and the heart of tne 
child w r as glad again. Regret does net be- 
come remorse in a child's heart. 

* Bishop HaygoocTs "Our Children." 



22 Childhood and Conversion. 

A child learns the lesson of repentance 
as soon as it can say, "I am sorry; I will 
not do it again." God has not left a child's 
heart without those germs of repentance 
which can be made fruitful by his word, 
attended by his Spirit, and bringing forth 
repentance unto life. 

Repentance cannot be reformation except 
in intent, and the child who promises, and 
who fully intends to do what it is told is 
right, is truly penitent. But repentance 
alone cannot save child or man: there must 
be faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. 



»6> — ^I wlfe^ — _ g)* 




\OC)<SVOJ 

°)° Co °)° Co °)° Co °J° Co °j° Co °)° Co ji o Co °)° Co j° Co °J° Co °)° Co 



CHAPTER III. 

A CHILD CAN HAVE FAITH IN JESUS. 

&M E are j ust ^ e( i by faith, child or man, 
\J<J alike. Whatever theorists may say 
about the relations of children to the Church, 
and their need of conversion, one thing is 
unquestionable — the child is not by nature a 
believer in Jesus Christ, and he that believ- 
eth shall be saved. With reference to the 
condition of him who is not able to believe, 
we now have nothing to do. We merely 
recognize the fact, so plainly stated in all 
the New Testament, that faith in Jesus 
Christ is the one ground of a sinner's ac- 
ceptance with God. Can a penitent child 
intelligently accept Jesus Christ as a Sav- 
iour? Can he exercise faith? If by faith 
we mean the same as the Catholic does ; if 

we condition faith upon an intelligent con- 

(23) 



24 Childhood and Conversion. 

ception of the way of salvation, as some 
Calvinists do — I should unhesitatingly say 
that a little child incapable of such knowl- 
edge is not capable of faith. His men- 
tal faculties are not so developed that he 
could grasp the meaning of the Creed, or 
understand the rationale of the plan of sal- 
vation; but is this necessary to the faith 
which saves? It certainly was not the faith 
of the woman w r ho washed the feet of Jesus 
with her tears, nor of the Philippian jailer, 
nor of the eunuch, nor of Lydia, and is 
not, I am sure, the faith which justifies. 
That faith is trust in a person, confidence 
in a promise ; and that faith is not only pos- 
sible to a child, but the child is of all beings 
the likeliest to exercise it. I say to a little 
girl — one in whom the sense of sinfulness 
has been aroused, one w T ho has promised to 
give her love and service to Jesus: "You 
say, Bessie, you have done wrong many 
times?" 



A Child Can Have Faith* 25 

" Yes, sir." 

•'Arc you SOITy tor it? and do you intend 
never to do wrong again?" 

- Yes, sir." 

"Who was it that came from heaven to 
save us?" 
"Jesus." 

"What did he do for us?" 
"He died for us." 
" Why did he die for us? " 
" Because he loved us." 
" Whom did he come to save? " 
"To save sinners." 
"Are you a sinner? " 
"Yes, sir." 

" Can you save yourself? " 
"No, sir." 

" Can your mother save you? " 
"No, sir." 
"Who can?" 
"Jesus." 
" How can you get him to do it?" 



26 Childhood and Conversion. 

" I must ask him." 

" But suppose you ask him, will he doit?" 

" Yes, sir." 

"When?" 

" Right away." 

Now this is no imaginary conversation. I 
have had many just such talks with little 
children not eight years old, and have seen 
the proofs in after times of the genuineness 
of their faith and the reliability of their con- 
version. They are not only able to believe, 
but of all times the days of early childhood 
are the days in which belief is the easiest. 
This is not theory; it is sustained by thou- 
sands of facts — facts in our own experience, 
facts coming under our own observation. 
Jonathan Edwards tells of the conver- 
version of Phoebe Bartlett at four years old. 
Walter Knox, one of the best preachers of 
the Georgia Conference, was converted at 
four years old. Dr. White, another, was 
converted at four years old; Rev. W. J. 



.J Child Can Have Faith. -27 

Parks, at seven 5 his son, Harwell II. Parks, 
at ten; a little Presbyterian girl in Wash- 
ington, Ga., at four years old; a little Bap- 
tist girl, whose story Dr. Warren told me, 
at six. Faith in the love of Jesus comes as 
naturally to a child as faith in a father's 
love, but it is a child's faith. The faith of 
a child is not so much a belief as a vision. 
The child trusts because with spiritual vision 
it sees. It is one of the blessed things of 
child life that children do not arrive at con- 
clusions as a result of reasoning or of in- 
vestigation. They believe on the word of 
those whom they love. They know it is 
true because those in whom they have con- 
fidence declare that it is. Not long ago I 
noticed a little blue-eyed boy listening with 
great eagerness to one of my sermons to 
children. After the sermon and the exer- 
cises were nearly concluded, I said : " Now 
I want all of you who have felt you were 
sinners, and asked God for Christ's sake to 



28 Childhood and Conversion. 

forgive you and give you new hearts, to come 
forward and stand here, and let me talk 
with you." Among the first to come was 
this little boy. I said: " Now we will take 
this smallest child, and see if he knows what 
he is doing." So I said to him: " What is 
3'our name? " 

" Charley Brown." 

" How old are you?" 

" Four years and a half old." 

"Are you a sinner?" 

" I don't know, sir." 

" Did you ever do wrong? " 

"Yes, sir, sometimes." 

" Who came from heaven to save us?" 

"Jesus." 

' ' What did he do for us ? " 

" He died for us." 

" Did he die for you? " 

"Yes, sir." 

" Does Jesus love you?" 

" Yes, sir; I know he does." 



. J ( 'hi Id ( % an Have Faith. 29 

11 Who do you love better than any- 
body ?" 

-Jesus." 

"Where would you go if you were to 
die?" 

" To heaven." 

This was a remarkable boy, but he was 
by no means exceptional. There are very 
many just as bright and just as intelligent, 
but thev are not common because of causes 
to which I may afterward refer. Faith 
has been given as the medium by which 
God's love is realized; and to none but 
children and those like children is faith 
easy. That they can trust in Jesus is ev- 
idenced by the fact that so many of them 
do. They could not give any thing like a 
satisfactory statement of the orthodox theo- 
ry of an atonement. They only know that 
Jesus died for them, and that God promised 
to bless them, and promising he will per- 
form. 



f crQ (5 c>o (io^b (5 oX3 (j pSb (5 oX3 (5o\) (io\J (So > 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE SPIRIT'S WORK ON A CHILD'S HEART. 

t*jE would be a bold man who would vent- 
ure to speak dogmatically of the time 



1 • 



in which God's Spirit begins his work on a 
child's heart. Long before the period of 
personal responsibility, long before the pe- 
riod when an intelligent repentance and a 
living faith are possible — if that period can 
be called long which antedates their morning 
hours — the Divine Spirit begins his work. 
The light that enlighteneth every man who 
cometh into the world shines in the little 
child's heart very soon after it begins to be. 
There is not a song of Jesus sung in its hear- 
ing, not a prayer to God offered, not a pict- 
ure of religious things which it sees on the 
wall, not a church-spire in the sight of the 

child, not a Sunday-school which it attends, 
(30) 



The Spirit's Work. 31 

not a preaching service, that is not used by 
God's Spirit in preparing the way of the 
Lord; but there comes a time when that 

Spirit who convinceth the world of sin and 
of righteousness and of judgment makes 
his presence felt. There are three very 
evident effects which always follow his ap- 
pearing. The first is, he convinces of guilt. 
Children are naturally very self-righteous. 
Little Jack Horner, who said, " What a good 
boy am I," is a fair representative of aver- 
age childhood. The day when a child 
realizes that it is a sinner may be a very 
early one, and the conviction may not at 
first be a vivid one, but it evidences the fact 
that there is a call to a new life, to a forgiv- 
ing Father. "I write unto you, little chil- 
dren, because your sins are forgiven you." 
The dread of the future, which nearly al- 
ways, if not always, goes with a true con- 
version, does not spring up in a child's 
heart in the beginning of its life, but it is 



32 Childhood and Conversion. 

manifest in an early period, and indicates 
the working of the Divine Spirit on the 
child's heart. That these feelings do take 
possession of the hearts of children is un- 
questionable. Fear of death and, when the 
sense of guilt-doing has been aroused, fear 
of judgment are vividly present in the heart 
of a child. 

Then there are longings after God and 
goodness of which the child partakes and 
which urgfe it to that which is pure and good, 
even though it is painfully conscious that it 
does not reach up to them. These are evi- 
dences of the divine call. 

That there are these exercises in early 
childhood there can be no question, but are 
they divine? Are they the calls of God, or 
merely natural feelings aroused by fhe in- 
fluences about the children? Are the re- 
ligious susceptibilities of childhood genuine, 
or are they merely a superficial, transient 
excitement of feeling? It is usual for those 



The Spirit's Work. 33 

who have much to do with excitable chil- 
dren — and all children arc so to a great ex- 
tent — to give very earnest warnings about 
trusting to these apparent impressions; and 
these persons suggest, if they do not ex- 
press very decided doubts as to whether 
these impressions are divine in their origin. 
I must confess I am not able to tell exactly 
what kind of a tree it is until I have seen 
the fruit ; and when I see the fruit, I am not 
prepared then to deny that it is fruit be- 
cause I cannot see how this thing could be. 
I see in a child manifestations which if seen 
in an adult I would call evidences of divine 
working, and I certainly have no reason to 
say in a child they are human or diabolical 
in their origin. 

These religious convictions are not found 
in every child, nor always in children of the 
same age. I once asked in a congregation 
of some hundreds of people if there w r as a 
man among them who could say that before 



34 Childhood and Conversion. 

he was fifteen years old he had never felt 
the Divine Spirit moving on his heart. A 
man of twenty-five years of age rose and 
said he never had a religious impression or 
conviction till he was twenty-one years old. 
He was an honest man, and stated the fact 
as it was. I said to him: "Was your fa- 
ther religious ? ' ' 

"Yes; he is a deacon in the Baptist 
Church." 

" Did you ever hear him pray? " 

"No, sir." 

" Did you ever see him pray? " 

"No, sir." 

" Did he ever teach you about God?" 

"No, sir." 

" Did you ever go to Sunday-school?" 

" Never, till I was grown." 

" Did you ever go to church?" 

"I never heard a sermon till I was 
grown." 

" Did your "mother pray?" 



The Spirit's Work. 35 

14 She is a mighty good woman, but T nev- 
er saw her pray." 

l< Were you ever taught to pray?" 

11 No, sir, never." 

"Then," said I, "it would have been a 
miracle if you had ever felt God's Spirit on 
your heart when no door had been opened 
for his entrance." 

I once asked a little boy of four years old 
how long he had loved Jesus. 

" I've been loving him all the time," said 
the child. 

That God does work on the child-heart 
is, I think, plainly shown by every child's 
experience. I think there are none of us 
who could very clearly tell when we first 
felt these divine movings on our hearts. I 
have preached more sermons to children, 
perhaps, than any man in this country, and 
these children have been of all classes; but 
I never found any, w r hen a body of them 
was gathered together, who were not evi- 



36 Childhood and Conversion. 

dently taught of God, and taught that they 
should come to Christ. They at least are 
always ready to respond to the invitations 
of the gospel. I do not now recall that I 
have ever seen a child under four years old 
whom I thought had intelligent religious 
convictions, and only a few at that age, very 
many more at six, and most at eight or ten. 

God called Samuel at six years old. We 
do not know how soon David and Daniel 
and Timothy and John the Baptist knew the 
Lord. Richard Baxter never knew when 
he first heard God's call to him; John Wes- 
ley communed at eight years old ; Dr. James 
E. Evans was converted at ten. 

Did Jesus mean what he said when he 
said these things were revealed to babes, 
and out of the mouths of babes and suck- 
lings God had perfected praise ? God does 
move in the way of genuine awakening and 
conviction on a little child's heart; but we 
despise these little ones, and often offend 
them by our coldness and skepticism. 



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CHAPTER V. 

THE SPIRIT'S WITNESS TO A CHILD'S HEART. 

When there has been a genuine repent- 
ance and a true faith, there has re- 
sulted a conversion, and the fact of this 
conversion is evidenced to the conscious- 
ness of the child. There is a religious ex- 
perience. Whether in adult or child, there 
are evidences of a divine life of which one 
cannot be entirely ignorant. If children are 
really converted, then children have the di- 
vine witness to their hearts that the) r are so. 
In those Churches in which the detail of 
Christian experience is a prerequisite to 
admission to membership there is sometimes 
hesitancy in receiving children because they 
do not and cannot give such a recital of their 
exercises of heart as is satisfactory. There 

is oftentimes as much error resultant from 

(37) 



38 Childhood and Conversion, 

the mistakes of the questioner as from the 
answers of the child. Children have an ex- 
perience which does not materially differ 
from that of adults, but children have the 
experience of children. Take a little girl 
of six years old, well taught and religious 
in her habits, who has made a religious pro- 
fession, and carefully examine her, and I 
think one will find about these things to be 
true: She has felt her sins, resolved to give 
them up, taken Jesus as a Saviour, and felt 
his peace in her heart. I was one day hold- 
ing a meeting, and a little boy, very childish, 
with a very sweet face, applied for Church- 
membership. I said to him: "What is 
your name?" 

" My name is Hugh." 

" How old are you? " 

" I am six, going on seven." 

"Hugh, did you ever do wrong?" 

" Yes; I've done wrong a heap of times." 

" Hugh, who took away your sins ? " 



The Spirit's Witness. 39 

u God and Jesus." 

-Why did God do it?*' 
" 'Cause I asked him." 
u When did you ask him?" 
11 On Sunday." 

-Did God tell you he had done so?" 

" He never told me in my ears." 

" Where did he tell you? " 

11 He told me in my heart." 

I asked another : ' ' How do those feel who 
do wrong? " 

"They feel bad." 

"When they come to Jesus and ask him 
to forgive them, how do they feel? " 

"They feel all right." 

"Who do you love best of everybody?" 
I asked another. 

" I love Jesus." 

"Does Jesus love you?" 

"Yes; I know he does." 

The conviction of sin in children is never 
intense. It ought not to be. Pilgrim bore 



40 Childhood and Conversion. 

a heavy burden for a long time, but Chris- 
tiana went at once to the cross. Pilgrim 
fell in the Slough of Despond ; but Matthew 
and James and John, the children, went 
hand in hand with their mother into the 
gate. I do not think the conviction and 
conversion of children would stand the test 
of the " Fourfold State," or of the " Meth- 
od of Grace." I do not think they are 
powerful convictions or powerful conver- 
sions, but I do think they will stand the test 
of the Bible. Children who claim to be 
converted may not always be able to tell ex- 
actly the time when this conversion took 
place. Generally they can ; sometimes they 
cannot; and very often they cast away their 
confidence because they cannot tell an ex- 
perience such as they hear told by others, 
and which seems to them to be the only 
true experience. I remember — and it was 
not a single case — a boy who, believing he 
was a Christian, and endeavoring to lead a 



The SfirtVs Witness. 41 

Christian life, was shaken out of his faith 
by hearing some good man speak oi long 
protracted suffering before his conversion. 
Do we not sometimes go beyond the Bible 
and farther than facts warrant by making 
too rugged and thorny the path into the 
way of life, and too great the suffering one 
has in becoming religious. Children do not 
suffer in becoming Christians. They have 
none of the intense pains of hell of which 
backsliding David speaks. They go to 
Jesus like Samuel went to God, and they 
do not emerge into a new world and ride in 
the sky in ecstatic delight. They do not 
have the rapturous height and holy joy 
which are oftentimes the portion of adult, 
especially of young adult, believers. I have 
rarely known a child to shout, have rarely 
seen one whose joy had risen so high that 
he lost self-control, but I should rather de- 
plore than rejoice in a wild excitement of 
the joy-giving emotions in a little child ; but 



42 Childhood and Conversion. 

the positive happiness which a child experi- 
ences when it is converted is as real as the 
wild ecstasy of Bunyan's Pilgrim, who 
leaped for joy; of Charles Wesley's believ- 
er, " who rode on the sky," " nor did envy 
Elijah his seat." 

The change in character wrought by the 
indwelling Spirit in the heart of a good child 
is not any more marked than the change % 

in his emotions, and perhaps not as much 
so. 

" I can see no change in my child," says 
an anxious mother. 

"Well, suppose you cannot, is it certain 
there is no change? Is the child untruth- 
ful, disobedient, willful, bad-tempered?" 

"No, she never was that." 

" Does she pray, and go to church, and 
read her Bible? " 

"Yes, she always did that." 

"Does she live as consistently as her 
mother?" 



7 s he > sy> it ' it * s \\ It n i tss . 4 3 

11 YeSj I think she does; but / don't see 
that she is changed." 

We arc not to expect the grain of mustard- 
seed, which luis just put up its spire, to bear 

the boughs and seed at once, but we are to 
see to it that the spire is there. Let us not 
deceive our children or ourselves. Merely 
to be moral is not to be religious, merely to 
join the Church is not to be converted, mere- 
ly to have some religious sensibility is not 
to be a new creature ; but let us not set up 
our ideas of what God should require in the 
place of what God does require. The Spir- 
it does his work in his own way. Let us not 
dictate to him w r hat to do. 



CHAPTER VI. 

SOME FACTS. 

When the comparative ease with which 
children can be induced to seek the 
Saviour and to join his Church is considered, 
one is absolutely amazed at the failure on 
the part of the evangelical Church to make 
the effort. God is no respecter of persons, 
and if any children have been saved, all chil- 
dren may be. I have already shown that 
children need conversion, that they may be 
converted, that they can repent, they can 
believe, that the Holy Spirit does work on 
their hearts, and that they do have a relig- 
ious experience. Are these statements and 
the arguments which support them borne 
out by the facts of history ? What was God's 
plan as set forth in the history of his saints 
— to form character or to reform it? 
(44) 



Some Facts. 45 

Samuel was a little boy of six years old. 

He did not know God, though he doubtless 
knew much of him. He lived in a day 
when there was great darkness and in a fam- 
ily where there was great wickedness; but 
when he was six years old, God called him, 
and he obeyed. How old was the shepherd 
lad of Bethlehem who afterward became 
David, the great king, when he began to 
serve God ? how old was Jeremiah ? how 
old was Daniel? how old was Josiah? 
John the Baptist, who was set apart from 
his mother's womb for his great work? 
Timothy, brought up in a heathen city, with 
his father a bigoted Greek, yet he knew the 
Scriptures from his youth? For many gen- 
erations the Catholic Church held to the 
doctrine that all baptized persons w r ere con- 
verted Christians, and, losing sight of the 
doctrine of justification by faith and regen- 
eration by the Divine Spirit, there was no 
effort to evangelize the masses ; but we no 



46 Childhood and Conversion. 

sooner find the work of genuine spiritual re- 
ligion revived than we find a special effort 
made to secure its blessings to children. 

Richard Baxter, who began his ministry 
as early as 1636, never knew when he was 
converted ; nor did John Janeway. Susan- 
na Wesley, though the daughter of a Non- 
conformist, had carefully gone over the con- 
troversy between the Church of England 
people and Puritans at the age of twelve. 
Jonathan Edwards gives an extended ac- 
count of a great revival in Northampton, 
New England, in which he says many chil- 
dren were converted ; and he gives an ac- 
count of their prayer-meetings, and a special 
mention was made of Phoebe Bartlett, a 
child of four years old, who, subjected to 
the rigid scrutiny of the old Puritans, gave 
every evidence of having been converted. 
Wesley's journal is full of instances of chil- 
dren of eight and ten years old becoming 
Christians, and with the greatest earnest- 



Some Facts* 47 

ness he enjoins upon his preachers the work 
of striving to save the children and seeking 
for and expecting their conversion. Bishop 
Aslmrv was but a child, a poor gardener's 
son, when lie was converted. In 1784, a 
great revival commenced in Epworth, En- 
gland, of which the old Arminian Magazine 
<rives account. It be^an with some children 
in a cottager's house, in a prayer-meeting. 
These were before the days of Sunday- 
schools, and when the Methodists were 
almost the only earnest revivalists in the 
kingdom. The work among children ought 
to have had much more attention than it did 
in the early days of the Church in this 
country; but despite the acknowledged 
neglect of it by the early preachers, arising 
from their large circuits and infrequent vis- 
its, there were many genuine conversions of 
little children reported. 

I have given the names of only a few 
eminent ministers who became religious in 



48 Childhood and Conversion. 

childhood. There ought to have been a 
great advance in this matter since the intro- 
duction of Sunday-schools, and there has 
been. If the effort to secure their conver- 
sion had gone at equal pace with the effort 
to secure their Sunday-school attendance, 
the results would have been greater. For 
over thirty years I have given this subject 
very close attention, and have preached 
directly to children not far from two thou- 
sand times. I have had abundant occa- 
sion to observe the results of this work, 
and have gathered a large number of facts 
to support the statements I have made in 
the foregoing chapters. A few incidents 
will suffice. 

In my early ministry I preached to a con- 
gregation of children in the city of Macon. 
Sixty children under fourteen years of age 
joined the Church; fifty-eight of those sixty 
were received into the Church at the end 
of six months ; and now, after the lapse of 



Same Facts. ,|9 

thirty years, I do not remember more than 
five who went hack to the world. Some of 

them went into other Churches, some of 
them are in heaven; but of those who re- 
main nearly every one is in some Christian 
Church. In that meeting a little girl, the 
daughter of a well-to-do banker, not himself 
religious, was deeply affected. She was 
not over ten years old, but was quite intel- 
ligent. She gave her heart to Jesus. Not 
long after she was taken quite sick. She 
had scarlet fever. Her mother sat anxiously 
by her bedside. " Mamma," said the child, 
" don't cry when I am dead, for I am going 
to heaven where Minnie [her sister who 
died the year before] is. Jesus says, ' He 
that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.' 
Do you think he would cast out a little girl 
who comes for the pardon of her sins? I 
don't." With sweet confidence the little one 
aw T aited the message ; it came at last. She 
said : " Mamma, prop me up in bed : I want 



50 Childhood and Conversion. 

to sing." Her mother placed the pillows 
under her, and she sung: 

" I want to be an angel, 

And with the angels stand, 
A crown upon my forehead, 
A harp within my hand." 

"Omamma," she said, "how beautiful, 
how bright! " and she was gone. 

Mr. Spurgeon said he had taken many 
children into the Church, but he had never 
had to discipline a single one in after years. 
Dr. Deems told me the same thing. The 
universal verdict of all the ministers of all 
denominations, with whom I have conversed, 
has been to the same effect. 

The little children who are led unto a 
genuine experience are but little children, 
but they know God and Jesus Christ whom 
he hath sent. 

There are other facts, and facts to which 
I may refer again ; one of these is that the 
discount — and it is large and painful on our 



Some Pacts. 5 l 

Church books — from what we hoped we had, 

and what we have secured, IS not found 
among our children who come into the 
Church before they are twelve years old, 
but from those who come in after that pe- 
riod. While pleading for confidence in the 
professions of a child, it must be recognized 
that a child's religious life has features of 
its own, and must be looked at from a proper 
stand-point. 




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CHAPTER VII. 

SOME FEATURES OF A CHILD'S RELIGION. 

have avowed my belief in the possibility 
l of a child's conversion, and established its 
correctness as well as I could; but by the 
conversion of a child must not be under- 
stood the moral perfection of a child and 
maturity of a Christian life. I doubt wheth- 
er the description of conversion given in 
"Alleine's Alarm," in Baxter's "Call," in 
Doddridge's " Rise and Progress," in Flav- 
el's "Method of Grace," in Mr. Wesley's 
sermon on "The Altogether Christian," or 
on " Salvation by Faith," and on "Justifi- 
cation," and especially his sermon on " Re- 
generation," would be that of a converted 
child of ten years old. There would be a 
maturity in such a life which should not be 

looked for in an immature child ; but for all 
(52) 



Features of a Child's Religion. S3 

that I am sure the child may be, and is, a 

Christian, truly converted. There is a dis- 
tinction well made between purity of inten- 
tion and consistent correctness of life, be- 
tween the blade and the ear and the full 
corn in the ear. 

What is childhood religion? And what 
is it not? It is, certainly, a true reverence 
and a genuine affection for God as a heav- 
enly Father. Perhaps this affection never 
rises higher than it does in a child's heart. 
" Whom do you love better than anybody 
else? " I asked a child of four years of age. 
"Jesus," said the child. " I love papa and 
mamma," said a little girl, " and God better 
than anybody." The perfect love, which 
casts out fear, is found in a child's heart in 
a higher degree than in the heart of a more 
consistent adult. 

Faith in the love of Jesus, in a child's 
heart, is without any limit. The little one 
knows nothing of the atonement, as a do^- 



54 Childhood and Conversion. 

ma, but he realizes that Jesus loves him, and 
because he believes that, he trusts him fully. 

Love to everybody is another character- 
istic of a child's religion. He has no limit 
to his affection for his fellows. Hate is a 
stranger to a child's heart. 

A sense of obligation is another feature 
of his life. "Is it wrong? is it a sin?" are 
questions he asks of many things of which 
adults make no question. These are posi- 
tive elements of his religious life, but there 
are some things his religion does not do for 
him. It does not make him consistently and 
continuously good. He is a child and the 
creature of appetite, and often, with the best 
intentions to do right, he does wrong. Mat- 
thew, the son of Christiana, ate some of 
the apples which fell over the fence, as the 
mother and the children were going to the 
Celestial City, and Matthew had a bad at- 
tack of the gripes, says the quaint dream- 
er, because of his transgression. Children 



Features of a Child 9 s Religion. 55 

have much to learn. They are very volatile, 
thoughtless, and careless, and consequently 
erring. They are often very quick in their 

tempers, and sometimes not as respectful in 
their speech as they should be. They need 
rebuke, punishment, and restraint. The 
conversion of a child does not render fami- 
ly government useless, nor render the rod 
useless; not at all. God chastens those he 
loves: we must chasten those we love. 

They are free from many of the faults 
of older people, but they have many faults 
which older people do not have. Many of 
these faults are not seen as such by them, 
and are entirely unintentional. " Brother 
Smith, why don't you make those boys keep 
their feet still ?" said an old preacher to me. 
"Because they are boys," I said. 

We sometimes call things by the wrong 
name, and blame where God does not blame. 
We are too exacting, and defeat ourselves 
by being so. We want a child to have all 



56 Childhood and Conversion . 

the solemnity of a man of years, and we 
don't find it. I came home from a good 
meeting with a mother whose little boy had 
seemed to be deeply interested. She was 
a little skeptical as to whether the boy knew 
what he was about, but had a good hope 
that he did know. I saw her hopes grow fee- 
bler when the little fellow came home with a 
young companion, and spreading a cloth 
on the floor began to flay checks. " I was 
afraid," said an old deacon spoken of by 
Mr. Hammond, " those children were not 
in earnest, and now I know it, for I saw 
that boy of Jones's, who went up for prayer 
last night, rolling a hoop down the street 
this morning." Children are frolicsome, 
and God made them so. They are not to 
be expected, because they are religious, not 
to love fun and seek for it; and it is no sign, 
that they are not religious when they love 
tops and balls and hoops and races ; and it 
would require a great deal more religion 



Features of a Child's Religion. 57 

than I ever knew a child to have to make 
him love work better than play, or castor- 
oil better than candy. 

It would be expecting too much oi a 

Christian child to expect him in all circum- 
stances to do exactly right. Faultless chil- 
dren are found in Miss Alcott's books, but 
they were brought up in Boston, and never 
believed in human depravity. Christian chil- 
dren are frequently overtaken in faults, and 
do things that they know are wrong. They 
stand on the pedestal of all other Christians, 
and are to be judged by the same law. That 
law is: " To whom much is given, of him 
shall much be required," and " to whom 
little is given, of him shall little be required." 
Nor are all children of the same make- 
up. Some are much more sensitive than 
others, some are much more indolent, 
some more selfish, some more affectionate; 
and a religious life will necessarily be mod- 
ified by the child's temperament. 



58 Childhood and Conversion. 

Religious children need much help and 
sympathy, and those who are older and 
stronger should give it and be gentle among 
them as a nurse who cherisheth her chil- 
dren. They must be fed with milk and not 
with meat. They are to be nourished on 
the sincere milk of the word. 




CHAPTER VIII. 

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE CONVERSION OF 

LITTLE CHILDREN UNDERRATED. 

think I state two facts: First, that 
much the larger number of those under 
eleven years old in Christian families are 
not converted; and, second, that there is 
no earnest effort made to secure their con- 
version. 

The first of these facts will not be dis- 
puted. It is, however, an important one to 
be considered. Here is a large class of 
most hopeful subjects, easily moved upon, 
susceptible in a high degree to religious im- 
pressions, without any obstacles in the way 
of conversion ; and yet they are not con- 
verted. They do not profess to be, their 
parents do not think they are, and the pas- 
tors who baptized them in infancy, and who 

(59) 



60 Childhood and Conversion. 

have their names on the Church record as 
baptized children, know they are not. The 
communions come and go, and they do not 
approach the table. They are moving in a 
vast company toward the period when none 
of the advantages around them now will 
belong to them, and the Church cherishes 
the hope that ere that time they may be- 
come converted; now at least they are not. 
The second statement will be questioned. 
Is there no effort made to secure the con- 
version of little children? Is there a well- 
directed and earnest effort to this end? 
Mark me, I do not ask if there is any effort 
to make the child intelligent, to teach it the 
articles of Christian faith, to discipline it to 
the control of its passions. This is done — 
and a most important work it is — but is there 
an effort made to arouse in the child the 
sense of its own sinfulness, and lead it to a 
true repentance, to a trusting faith in Jesus 
Christ? This I doubt very seriously. Is it 



The Work Underrated* 61 

done in the Sunday-school? Can it be done 
there? I have now about closed my fiftieth 
year ot" uninterrupted connection with the 
Sunday-school; I have gone from the in- 
fant class through all the grades, and have 
worked as teacher and as superintendent. I 
have acquaintance with Sunday-schools of 
all kinds, and I must not only deny that this 
work is done there, but declare it as my 
opinion that as the Sunday-school is at 
present constituted it cannot be done effi- 
ciently by it. The school is a school. It 
has its work cut out for it. It has such a 
variety of exercises necessarily that it is 
unable to give its close attention to this one 
point. It might do a great deal toward it, 
and a great deal more than it does. It does 
often sadly underrate the work of the soul's 
conversion, and is more intent on making 
itself entertaining or gaining eclat for its 
skillful working, and more solicitous for its 
reputation as being well furnished and doing 



62 Childhood and Conversion. 

first-class educational work, and keeping up 
its roll, than it is about the religious charac- 
ter of its pupils; but if, as is often the case, 
the officers feel intensely concerned in the 
religious welfare of the children, and yet 
are anxious to carry out the object for which 
the school is organized, they find it impos- 
sible to do the school-work and at the same 
time do much of any thing special in this 
direction. As to conversions in Sunday- 
school, I do not think that I ever knew of a 
dozen. The work there is preparatory, and 
while more ought to be done, and more in 
my opinion can be done, yet it is sadly true 
that it is not and has not been done. 

Nor does the pulpit generally make a di- 
rect effort for the conversion of little chil- 
dren. The pastor sometimes employs a good 
woman — sometimes the wife of a profession- 
al evangelist, sometimes one of those good 
women who are called to the work — to talk 
to his children ; but rare enough it is for a 



The Work- Underrated. 63 

pastor to have a special meeting for the chil- 
dren in the church and to strive to lead 
them to the Saviour, The little five-minute 
sermons with which some pastors preface 
their services are after all only sci'monettcs 
— little all around. The pastor has so much 
to do, and is so burdened with his impor- 
tant work, that he has but little time and, he 
thinks, but little fitness for taking the infants 
in his arms and gently bearing them to his 
Master. That he could do more, and that 
he ought to do more, I will try to show; but 
I am speaking now of what is done in the 
average pastorate. 

In the family more is done than is done 
elsewhere by the devout and earnest mother, 
but I do not think it needs an argument to 
prove that the conversion of little children 
is neither sought for nor looked for in the 
family as a general thing, and that, save cer- 
tain general encouragements and admoni- 
tions and good counsels, very many mothers 



64 Childhood and Conversion. 

neglect this work while their children are 
small, and hope it will be accomplished in 
some other way and at some other time. 
Why is this? I think there is no better an- 
swer than to say it is because the importance 
of the conversion of children is overlooked 
and undervalued. It does not arise from 
any want of solicitude nor from any error as 
to the necessity for conversion. All classes 
likely to read this little book agree to that ; 
but it does arise from other causes, and the 
chief one is that suggested above. They do 
not think it is a matter of prime importance. 
Is it? Let us see. 





CHAPTER IX. 

WHY IMPORTANT THE DEPRAVITY OF THE 

HUMAN HEART. 

do not intend to drift into theological 
discussion save as it is immediately con- 
nected with the matter in hand, but a glance 
at one phase of theology must be had. In 
1784 the Methodist preachers in Baltimore 
accepted as an article of faith one which 
had been for over two centuries accepted 
by the Church of England. It expressed 
in the mildest form possible the view held 
by the Church from the early centuries. It 
reads in this way: "Original sin standeth 
not in the following of Adam (as the Pela- 
gians do vainly talk), but it is the corruption 
of the nature of every man, that naturally is 
engendered of the offspring of Adam , where- 
by man is verv far gone from original right- 
5 (65) 



66 Childhood and Conversion. 

eousness, and of his own nature inclined to 
evil, and that continually." This doctrine 
was received by the Methodist Episcopal 
Church in America, and stands as one of her 
accepted articles of faith. I think it states 
what is true, and no more than what is true. 
Children, left to themselves, will not grow 
up religious or moral. They will develop 
the animal appetites, will become selfish, 
sensual, passionate, and lawless. Religion 
cannot be transmitted, and the children of 
the best people, left alone, will develop not 
the pure and good, but the vile and criminal. 
This is not a question to be settled by logic 
or to be decided by our hopes or by our 
ideas of what ought to be. The declara- 
tions of Scripture must be supported by the 
facts and experiences of men ; and if there 
is one thing more plainly brought out in the 
world's history than another, it is that as a 
race we are far gone from original right- 
eousness. To argue that it ought not to be, 



Depravity <>/ 1 1 cart . 67 

and therefore it is not, is not a satisfactory 

method of reasoning. It is not my purpose 

to enter into an elaborate argument with 
reference to a subject that is as old as the 
days of Augustine. The formula accepted 
by the Baltimore Christmas Conference, 
which came to them direct from Mr. Wes- 
ley, and which came to him from the Re- 
formers, expresses what I believe to be the 
exact truth. Children are merely to be let 
alone, and they will go into evil ways, and 
that continually. Our own consciousness 
and our observation alike establish this state- 
ment. We can trust a hyacinth bulb to give 
us a hyacinth, we can trust a rose-bush to 
give us a rose ; but the fairest child that ever 
lived, if untaught and uncared for, will not 
give us a saint. We cannot rely upon fam- 
ily or culture or surroundings for purifying 
the heart. These have all been tried, and 
all have failed. From the homes of the 
pious, from the homes of the cultured, 



63 Childhood and Conversion. 

alike, the children of the household have 
gone forth to lives of crime, to lives of unbe- 
lief, to lives of God-despising. It is no mere 
speculation, it is no hap-hazard thing, it is 
fearfully and sadly true that the seeds of 
sin spring up for death as soon as infancy 
begins. After all, it is a struggle to live ; we 
have only to cease to struggle, and we die. 
There is no difficulty in developing vice; 
the trouble is in developing virtue. Piety 
is not native to the human heart; it must be 
brought into it. 

There are different views of a child's 
nature, and it is necessary to get the correct 
one. The first is that of the Optimist, the 
Unitarian, and Universalist, that there is no 
native tendency toward evil; that if a child 
were left to himself, he would develop the 
good and pure. The answer to this is found 
in the world's history. In the soft, spice- 
bearing islands of the South Seas, in cult- 
ured China, in Hindoostan, in Egypt, in 



Depravity of Heart* 69 

Tartan', we see what human nature is when 
the gospel has not come with its man-dis- 
honoring doctrine of human depravity, as 
some call it. The Catholics, Roman and 
Anglican, say the baptismal waters have 
washed the dismal stain away. Italy and 
Austria and France and Spain answer this 
statement. The semi-Pelagians of our own 
country say God has for Christ's sake put 
us back into a state of purity like that of 
Adam in the garden; but also our own ex- 
perience and observation attest that man 
here is of his nature inclined to evil, and 
that continually. The Holy Spirit alone can 
change this bias of human nature and turn 
the heart heavenward. 




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CHAPTER X. 

WHY IMPORTANT WOOINGS OF THE SPIRIT 

AND HIS WORK ON A CHILD'S HEART. 

m have in a chapter before this recog- 
± nized the truth of the Spirit's work on 
the child's heart. This work has been well 
presented in Article VIII. of our religion: 
"The condition of man after the fall of 
Adam is such, that he cannot turn and pre- 
pare himself, by his own natural strength 
and works, to faith, and calling upon God; 
wherefore we have no power to do good 
works, pleasing and acceptable to God, with- 
out the grace of God by Christ preventing 
[going before] us, that we may have a good 
will, and working with us, when we have 
that good will." This grace of God is 
found in the efficient working of God's 

Holy Spirit. What influence maternal and 

(70) 



Wooings oj the Spirit* 71 

paternal piety may have upon one's offspring 
it is difficult to say. Religious susceptibili- 
ties may be, ami certainly are, greater in 
some children than in others, and I think 
they are more easily aroused and more eas- 
ily developed in the children whose parents 
were religious before their birth. We know 
at least that the children who have been 
religiously trained are much more easily 
moved than those who have not been. 
Childhood is a susceptible period and a 
formative period, when impressions are eas- 
ily made, and religious homes have a won- 
derful power in making lasting impressions. 
The children in the primary classes in the 
Sunday-schools, to whom the Spirit of God 
has come and on whom the Spirit continu- 
ally moves, are most admirably situated to 
become Christians. They have the fewest 
obstacles in their way, and the largest num- 
ber of advantages in their favor. They are* 
not skeptical, proud, self-willed; but are 



72 Childhood and Conversion. 

humble, unambitious, teachable, and believe 
implicitly whatever they are told by those 
they love. They are not drunken, profane, 
impure, but are on the side of the good. I 
speak now of those who have been carefully 
and religiously trained in the Sunday- 
schools and in the family. How important, 
then, to take this period, when the ground 
is comparatively free from weeds and when 
it is in admirable condition to sow the seeds 
of piety, and to nourish it ! The compara- 
tive freedom, too, from those influences 
which have such power in after time gives 
another important factor in this work. The 
little child in a Christian home has every 
thing to make him religious. The fearful 
influences w r hich evil companionship exert 
upon those exposed to it are not felt in early 
childhood. The family altar, the daily read- 
ing of God's word, the prayers at the 
mother's knee, the influence of a pious 
mother's example — all these unite to make 



Wooings of the Spirit. 7^ 

religion comparatively easy to a child, and 
we only know when these arc absent how 

hard it is for a man to surrender his heart 

to God. The perfect simplicity of gospel 
truth — its admirable adaptation to a child's 
nature — clearly indicates the time at which 
it should be presented. It staggers the 
pride of a strong intellect, but to one of 
these little ones it has nothing in it which 
seems to his trusting nature to be incredi- 
ble. The power to believe in the unseen is 
the one thing which from our infancy grows 
weaker, and the child who believes all he is 
told of God, of Christ, of immortality, and 
accepts it without question, may become in 
after time a skeptic, w T ho, with philosophy 
and vain deceit, seeks to gratify the de- 
mands of an imperious rationalism. When 
the gospel is most needed, then the gospel 
is the easiest accepted. How important, 
then, that at this time the truth should be 
presented to the child's heart! 



olo ^q ojoSq ojo (^qo)o /q ojo ^q oJo/qoIo/q o)° «^o ol° (To °) Vo°)° Co 



CHAPTER XI. 

WHY IMPORTANT INFLUENCES AROUND 

CHILDREN. 

fHE child cannot be always a child. He 
must go out into a world of sin. He 
must go with human passion and appetite 
into circumstances calculated to arouse them 
to evil exercise. The bright little boy, 
taught in a Christian home, but whose heart 
has in it no reverence for God, no love for 
his law — who is what he was when he was 
born, save that the innocence of his nega- 
tive life has by slow degrees been giving 
way to the temptations addressed to his tem- 
per and passions — goes out into a world of 
• wicked boys and becomes infected by them. 
It is impossible to build a wall so high 
around our homes as to protect them from 

moral contagion ; and especially is that true 
C74) 



Influences Around Children. 75 

in the Southern land, where the servants of 
the household have such low views of mo- 
rality, and especially of purity. Your boy 
is poisoned before you dream he is in dan- 
ger. He goes out into the world without 
religion. No love to God influences him, 
no fear of God restrains him ; he has in him 
the depraved appetites of poor humanity, 
and how soon he becomes the victim ! My 
very soul shrinks in horror from remember- 
ing the depth of wickedness I found un- 
blushing in the first boys' school I entered 
after I left my mother. The cruelty, the 
lying, the indecency, the dishonesty, and 
especially the unblushing impurity of boys 
from the best families in the land, are horri- 
ble; and, as a teacher, my soul has been 
shocked at seeing even in little girls ex- 
hibitions of wdekedness which one could 
scarcely have supposed possible. The street 
gamin has his place in story and in song, 
and is often represented as the noblest of 



76 Childhood and Conversion. 

his kind, but at six years old I have known 
him to be a liar, a hypocrite, and a thief. 
Let any teacher who has controlled children 
speak out as he knows, and what a story he 
can tell of the evil influences which affect 
our children from their associates ! The 
placards, bold and glowing and attractive, 
which show r men paste on our walls are edu- 
cating to indecency and wickedness a race 
of boys. Seeing an advertisement of an 
Augusta (Me.) house, of a very cheap pa- 
per w r ith prizes — and this concern seems the 
center from which these things go out — my 
little boy, a lad of thirteen, sent his name. 
The paper was apparently harmless, but the 
columns were filled with advertisements, cal- 
culated to attract boys, of all kinds of w r icked 
pictures and books. Much of our literature 
for boys and girls is filthy beyond concep- 
tion. The exhibitions provided for them in 
cities are vile; and alas! their social amuse- 
ments are oftentimes calculated only to de- 



Influences Around Children* 77 

Grrade. Let a boy of thirteen years old, 
taught in a dancing-school, be introduced 
to a children's party, and with a girl oi 
twelve years old in his arms engage in a 
round dance, and it requires no cynic to say" 
what will be the result; and yet this thing 
is seen nightly during the gay season of our 
large cities. The placards on the walls, the 
songs sung on the stage, the pictorial papers 
exhibited on the book-stalls are all of the 
same tendency. What are w r e to do? We 
cannot hide away, we cannot find a pure 
atmosphere ; we cannot escape the tempter 
— we must provide against his power. A 
heart full of love to God is a security against 
all these things. A child who has loved 
God and prayed from his sixth year, with a 
trusting heart, will keep himself — or, better 
still, will be kept by God — as pure as was 
Daniel in the court at Babylon. How vi- 
tally important is it, then, to bring him at 
the earliest age to Jesus ! 



CHAPTER XII. 

WHY IMPORTANT HABITS, BAD AND GOOD. 

"lis it not time for me to begin the educa- 
<1 tion of my child?" said a good woman 
to a philosopher. 

"How old is she?" said he. 

"Four years." 

"You have begun four years too late," 
said the wise man. 

Habits are the vehicles through which 
grace often works. Good habits, formed 
automatically, become good by sanctifying 
grace after awhile. Teach a child to pray, 
to read his Bible, to go to church, and keep 
him at it; and when he is converted, he is 
not then to learn how to do these things. 
They are ready to his hand when con- 
verting grace comes in to confirm and 

strengthen and purify these habits, and they 
(78) 



Habits ) Bad and Good 1 * y<> 

become a good second nature. They are 
being formed from birth. The child who 
has been taught to pray and is not converted 
gives it up, if lie is a Protestant, when he 

gets toward manhood, and continues it, if 
he is a Catholic, as a kind of atonement 
for his sins. One day a Syrian notion-ped- 
dler came to my door. He was a Roman 
Catholic. Among his books were two small 
religious manuals for children. Prayers 
were given, beautiful ones for morning and 
night, and grace at meals, instructions on the 
way to prepare for confession, for the mass, 
of faith ; but faith w r as belief in the Church's 
teachings, and there was no Holy Ghost in 
the book. Get such a child converted, how- 
ever, and these habits, confirmed by grace, 
make him a beautiful Christian. Let him 
remain unconverted, and he becomes a 
wicked formalist. Moral habits, not ex- 
pressly religious, the result of careful train- 
ing, may be formed in childhood and be- 



8o Childhood and Conversion. 

come a great aid in future Christian life, but 
if religion does not come in to strengthen 
and direct them, they grow feebler with 
advancing years. When Coleridge heard 
a friend speak of letting children alone, 
he took him into his garden. " There," he 
said, "you see the child's heart; if fruits 
grow not, weeds do." We cannot begin 
too early to train our children to form good 
habits; we cannot too soon realize how lit- 
tle they are worth without a religious af- 
fection to support them. But evil habits 
require no culture: they come of them- 
selves. 

The child must be taught to pray. A 
prayerless habit springs naturally, and it con- 
tinues to grow stronger and stronger. An 
early conversion brings into being the good 
habits which with increasing years are more 
and more important and more and more 
powerful; let an evil habit grow on, and it 
becomes almost omnipotent. Habits of bad 



HabitS y I>(1(/ (Did (rO(>(/. 81 

temper result in the future in almost uncon- 
trollable passion. 

The evil habits of animal indulgence be- 
come oftentimes the tyrants which drag chil- 
dren to a grave of infamy. To anticipate 
some of these forms of wicked indulgence 
we must begin young, very young, and by 
constant effort eradicate these evil tend- 
encies before they form habits; for when 
formed, while not incurable, they are fear- 
fully dangerous. There is but one way to 
prevent this formation of evil habits. It is 
to have a child's heart full of religion, and 
thus you will make him strong to resist all 
these tendencies; and these habits, never 
formed, are never to be cured. Let any of 
us look back and say whether all his life 
long he has not suffered from the effects of 
some evil, if not vile, habit, formed before 
he was fourteen years old. Recognizing 
this fearful danger, let us begin so early 

that the love of God becomes a habit, and 
6 



82 Childhood and Conversion. 

reverence and prayer cannot point to a be- 
ginning. I am just from a camp-meeting 
where I heard a saintly old man of eighty- 
one years tell of how from his earliest recol- 
lection he had been praying; how when 
he was a little child he was converted, and 
how at twelve years old he knew that what 
he had years before was religion ; and how 
he had always been in the Church. Never 
drunken, never profane, never godless! O 
how beautiful such a life ! how serene such 
an old age ! 




CHAPTER XIII. 

HOW TO EFFECT THE CONVERSION OF CHIL- 
DREN FAITH, PRAYER, EFFORT. 

trust I have clearly brought out in the 
preceding chapters the need of the con- 
version, the possibility of the conversion, 
and the importance of the conversion of chil- 
dren. I now enter upon an inquiry as to 
how to secure it. It will be remembered 
that I do not attempt to point out the first 
beginnings of a religious life in children; 
and with many children beginning a relig- 
ious life in very early childhood any thing 
like a marked conversion from good to bad 
is not to be looked for. I know not a few 
children who have as little idea of the way 
of faith which an adult sinner must take as 
is possible, but whose moral character and 

whose religious character are very beautiful. 

(83) 



84 Childhood and Conversion. 

What we propose to do now is to bring 
the child to a true idea of his need of a 
Saviour, and lead him to see that he has one : 
to make a good child a Christian child. If 
this is done, we must have faith in God and 
faith in the child. If we are disposed to 
doubt the work of the Divine Spirit on the 
heart of a child, if we refer every thing to 
the emotions, the nervous excitability of 
children, and if we discredit every apparent 
movement toward a religious life in children, 
we may not expect to secure their conver- 
sion. If this conversion is secured, we must 
believe in its possibility. I have already 
attempted to establish this point clearly. If 
we desire it, we must remember that the 
Holy Spirit alone can effect it, and we must 
call upon God for the Spirit's power. As 
parents we should pray earnestly for the 
early conversion of our children, and as pas- 
tors we should pray for it and look for it. 
The conversion of children must be an 



Faith, Prayer, Effort. 85 

awakening, and only the Spirit of God can 
do that work effectively. The Church 
ought to pray, the Sunday-school ought to 
pray specifically and constantly for the con- 
version of these little ones. From the in- 
fant class upward, not from the Bible class 
downward, should be the way taken. I can- 
not press this too much. There may be a 
mere surface work on the hearts of chil- 
dren, a mere move upon their sensibilities 
and emotions, and no permanent good may 
result ; but when any thing is relied upon but 
the mighty Spirit of God, this is sure to be 
the case. Why the Church is the mother 
of the Christian, the bride of Christ, I may 
not say; but without her earnest prayers, 
united and fervent, we can no more expect 
children to be converted than we may expect 
adults to be. The parent should pray in 
deep earnest, with living faith, with untir- 
ing patience, and, praying, look eagerly for 
results. Let every awakening of conscience, 



86 Childhood and Conversion. 

every inquiry about God and heaven, be 
recognized as God's answer to the prayer, 
till it reaches its full answer in a child's 
saying, " I know him." 

Each pastor who prays for his people 
should remember the lambs of his flock. 
They should be known to him and specially 
mentioned by him. If he has any faith in 
prayer for others, he surely can have faith 
in repeating the prayer found in the bap- 
tismal service : * ' That the old Adam in these 
children may be so buried that the new man 
may be raised up in them; that they may 
have power and strength to have victory, and 
to triumph against the devil, the world, and 
the flesh." Surely the superintendent and 
teachers in the Sunday-school will not fail 
to pray for those committed to their charge. 

But children are not going to be brought 
to Jesus, unless an effort is made to bring 
them, any more than adults are, and there 
should be special work done to secure this 



Faith, Prayer, Effort. 87 

result. It is not essentially different from 
the work done to secure the salvation of the 

older people, but lias its personal features 
and demands particular attention. This 
special work we will now consider. 




)^Xo )^ \o°)jL \Q°)j2i Co°)° <fo°)° <fo )° Cq°}° Cq }° Co°)° <Tq )° (To 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE PREACHER AND THE CHILDREN. 

place this first because I believe it the 
most important. The work of teaching 
ought to begin at home, and the mother 
should be the first evangelist, and around 
the family altar the child should worship for 
the first time. The Sunday-school may 
have in its infant department something to 
do with this training, with influencing chil- 
dren to take the steps needful, and these 
two departments of work are to be consid- 
ered ; but the most important work is to be 
done by the pastor, who represents the whole 
Church. He has been chosen of God and 
put in charge of the whole flock, lambs as 
well as sheep. What can he do to gather 
the lambs into the fold? In the first place, 

he should know the children. If his pas- 

(88) 



Preacher and ( 'hildroi. <Sy 

torate is too large to allow this, it is too large. 
The flock of sheep that is so large that ooe 

Shepherd cannot see alter the lambs as well 
♦ as the sheep is too large. A man like 
Spurgeon can be a great evangelist without 
being a pastor, and can relegate the pastor- 
al office to others, but such exceptions are 
only found in very large communities. Let 
the pastor go to the infant classes and learn 
who the children are. They belong to him, 
and he must give account for them in the 
great day. A pastor should always ask for 
the children when visiting, and, if possible, 
see them. He should meet them specially. 
Jesse Lee used to have the children of the 
Society at Lovely Lane meet him every Sat- 
urday afternoon. He knew them all. One 
of the most beautiful pictures in our language 
is the picture of the parish of Legh Rich- 
mond, in the Isle of Wight, and of the young 
cottager. We are too far from our children 
oftentimes. We must get closer to them. 



90 Childhood and Conversion. 

Personal intercourse is needful in order 
to personal conversation, and the pastor 
should talk to the children about personal 
religion. He should not be content to cat- 
echise, but should press home his questions,, 
very gently but very decidedly. 

The pastor should preach to children as 
he preaches to adults. At least one sermon 
a month should be given to them. It should 
be carefully prepared, and delivered at the 
most popular hour. A silly sermonette 
is a mere trifle. The children must be 
fed on milk, and not on water-gruel. The 
sermon should not be a mere moral essay, 
but a gospel sermon ; not a hap-hazard talk, 
but a carefully prepared sermon. I may be 
pardoned for giving the outline of a sermon 
I have preached a great many times to little 
children. It is about forty minutes long. 
The text is : " What must I do to be saved ? ' ' 
A sketch of the sermon would be about this : 

"Paul and Silas were two good preachers. 



Preacher and ( 'hildren, 91 

They were traveling preachers, and they 
came to a fine city where there were 
no Christians and no church; so they 
had to preach out-of-doors, and they went 
to the river-bank and preached there. 
Well, they healed a poor sick woman, and, 
strangely enough, the people got angry with 
them, and the magistrates beat them and 
sent them to jail, and the cruel jailer shut 
them up and fastened their feet. But they 
did not care ; they loved God and knew that 
God loved them, and so they began to sing 
and pray, and then God shook the prison 
and set them free ; but they did not run 
away, and when the jailer was about to kill 
himself they told him they were all there. 
Then the jailer knew they were God's men, 
and he was very much frightened, but cried 
out and asked what he must do to be saved. 
Why was he so frightened ? Why was he so 
troubled ? It was because he was not saved. 
Now are you saved ? What is it to be saved ? 



92 Childhood and Conversion* 

"i. It is to have our sins forgiven. Are 
you a sinner ? Did you ever tell a falsehood ? 
Did you ever get angry? Did you ever 
speak saucily to your mother? Did you 
ever take any thing not yours? Did vou 
ever use bad words? Have you always 
been as good as you could be? If you have 
not, then you are a sinner, and must be 
saved. 

" 2. Are your hearts good? Do they love 
good things and hate bad things? Do you 
find it easy to do right and hard to do wrong ? 
Do you find in your heart no pride of dress, 
or of your good looks, or of your nice home ? 
Do you love those that don't love you? If 
you do not, your heart is not good like the 
heart of Jesus. 

"Now, how are you to be saved? 

"i. You must know you are sinners. 

"2. You must confess and forsake your 
sins. 

"3. You must take Jesus as your Saviour/' 



Preacher and Children* 93 

This is a mere outline of the way in which 
I think children ought to be preached to. 
Have confidence in their sound sense, and 
while you use the illustrations and adopt the 
manner of address necessary for them, let> 
the body of the sermon be full of strong 
evangelical doctrine. Often ask them for- 
ward for prayer. Do not let it become a 
mere heartless formality, but make it a real, 
earnest, converting service. 

I have found it well, in charges where it 
was practicable, to have a special evangel- 
istic series of meetings for children. An 
account of one held in Elberton only recent- 
ly will answ r er as a specimen of the meet- 
ings I have found very profitable. On 
Sunday morning I preached on the possi- 
bility and importance of the conversion of 
children; in the afternoon I preached to the 
children on their sins and their Saviour, 
and invited those who knew they were sin- 
ners to come forward and kneel, and ask 



94 Childhood and Conversion. 

God to forgive them and give them clean 
hearts. 

I had a mothers' meeting in the morning, 
a children's meeting in the afternoon, and 
a young people's meeting at night. I had 
a number of cards for the "Lovers of Je- 
sus." They were attractively designed, 
with a cross and a crown as the illustra- 
tion. On them was printed: 

God is my Father. 
Jesus is my Saviour. 
The Holy Spirit is my helper. 
I take Jesus to be my Saviour. 

I promise to love him, trust him, and to try always 
to obey him. 

I will go to church every Sunday, if I can. 

I will go to Sunday-school regularly. 

I will read my Bible. 

I will try to be good and to do good. 

I will pray every night and morning. 

Age, . [Name.] 

A number of children joined this little 
society. I preached to them on the wit- 
ness of the Spirit, on repentance and faith, 



Preacher and Children* 95 

on the importance Of early piety, etc. I al- 
ways had an altar service. I often cate- 
chised them, and I then asked all who felt 

it their duty to join the Church to stand up. 

I then, on another day, asked all who 
wished to join the Methodist Church to give 
the pastor their names. Thirty-two did so. 
I gave each child a copy of my little book, 
1 ' The Child and the Saviour ; ' ' and to those 
who wished to join the Methodist Church, a 
copy of the "Young Methodist." In this 
case, and in all cases in which the meetings 
have been successful, I had the hearty co- 
operation of the pastor. 

Preaching to children is not as difficult as 
many think it. It ought to be plain, simple, 
to some extent dramatic, intermixed with re- 
ligious incidents which you know to be true, 
many of which you are able to draw from 
your own observation. When children come 
forward for prayer, let it be prayer. Don't 
try to save them by a catechism, such as: 



96 Childhood and Conversion. 

"Do you believe Jesus can save you? Do 
you believe he will? Do you believe he 
does? If so, get up here and say so." In 
every case the ease with which this work is 
done often makes persons skeptical, but it 
is not easier than the conversion of the three 
thousand on the day of Pentecost, of the 
woman that was a sinner, of the thief on the 
cross, and of the Philippian jailer. 

It can be done ; but the effort must be 
made, or it will not be done. But will it 
abide? That depends. 




1 3 o (To <y°i (b °/j£ Co ^feC° °J)¥\ °)%!\ °) ° <v° °) ° C° ) o (Q 
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CHAPTER XV. 

Till; WAY TO SECURE THE CONVERSION OF 
CHILDREN IN SUNDAY-SCHOOL WORK. 

fnE Sunday-school has now become the 
Biblical school. It was once a mere 
school of letters, with the catechism and the 
Bible as a part of its course, but its main 
end was to give the elements of an educa- 
tion to those who had no other opportuni- 
ties to learn. It was a theological school 
almost altogether; it has now become a Bib- 
lical school. It is a school. It is not a con- 
gregation, waiting to be taught from the 
pulpit, but a school. Knowledge of exege- 
sis, of Biblical geography, of ancient cus- 
toms, of sacred and profane history, are the 
requisites in the teacher. Teaching is the 
main work. The social features, the music, 

and lectures, are only designed to help for- 
7 (97) 



98 Childhood and Conversion. 

ward this end. In some Churches — the 
Catholic and Episcopal, and in a less degree 
the Presbyterian — the doctrines of the 
Church are made prominent, but in nearly 
all the schools the exegetical is the feature. 
It does not aim to secure conversion, but to 
prepare the way for it. Can it be an evan- 
gelical, as it is an educational agency? 

I avow my opinion that its teaching func- 
tion is its most important one, and that it 
cannot give that up without changing its 
character; but I am satisfied it can be more 
evangelical than it is, and can be more effi- 
cient as a nurturing- power and yet preserve 
its teaching function. I do not think it nec- 
essary for it to cease to teach in order for it 
to make an effort to secure the application of 
its teaching; and I therefore suggest some 
methods by which I think its work may be 
more effective in this line. In the first place, 
let those connected with it recognize the im- 
portance of this result and work to this end. 



Sunday-school Work, 99 

The superintendent of a Sunday-school in 

the Southern Methodist Church is chosen 
by a Quarterly Conference on the nomina- 
tion of his pastor. I Ie has a position of vast 
responsibility. He ought to have great af- 
fection for his pupils, and ought to be great- 
ly loved by them. He ought to see to it 
that the fundamental doctrines of Chris- 
tianity, those that teach the way to be saved, 
are carefully taught; and he ought to teach 
them himself. A five minutes' drill on the 
catechism ought to come as regularly as the 
Sunday comes. Until the moral law, the way 
of faith, repentance, the witness of the Spir- 
it, regeneration, justification, the work of the 
Holy Spirit, are better known to his chil- 
dren than the way to Damascus, his work 
is not done. Occasionally — not perfunc- 
torily, but earnestly, prayerfully — he ought 
to give them an affectionate call to the 
Saviour, and urge them to seek religion. 
When the children are awakened, he ought 



IOO Childhood and Conversion. 

to be the most earnest in trying to secure 
their happy conversion. In holding some 
meetings in Atlanta, some years since, W. 
A. Hemphill, one of the busiest men in 
the city, superintendent of Trinity Sunday- 
school, found time to come to the children's 
4 o'clock meeting; and John C. Courtney, 
superintendent of First Church school, found 
time to come to every service in his church 
aimed at this end. The result was that fifty 
of the Trinity children joined the Church 
on one Sabbath, and as many from First 
Church. The superintendent ought now 
and then, not too frequently, to call his 
teachers together, not for the study of the 
lesson, nor to lay before them new plans, 
but to pray for the children, and to talk to 
them about their salvation. He ought to 
give the pastor ample time to talk to the 
children from the platform on this subject. 
I think he ought to provide himself with 
such little tractates as he may find valuable 



Sunday-school Work. 101 

to give to the children. "The Young Cot- 
tager" of Legh Richmond, " The Child and 
the Saviour," are two among many that I 
can think of at this moment which he could 
profitably distribute. There are many little 
books which his reading will tell him are 
suited to a child. As a gift from him they 
will be doubly valued. He should quietly 
and affectionately speak privately to his chil- 
dren, especially to the boys getting away 
from childhood, and urge them to come to 
Jesus. He has many other things to do 
which only a consecrated man, set apart to 
this work, will be apt to know, but which 
the Spirit will teach him. 

There should be in every school frequent, 
but not too frequent, services which aim 
at immediate conversion. I should advise 
that before the monthly communion service 
all the other exercises should be cut short, 
and earnest and special prayer should be 
made in the school for converting power. 



102 Childhood and Conversion. 

The Sunday-school should co-operate with 
the pastor. The children should be urged 
to attend the regular services, and the 
teachers should see to it that the children 
go, and when the special services of which 
I have spoken are held the teachers should 
always be on hand. 

When that excellent woman Miss Laura 
A. Haygood was teacher of a large class of 
}^oung ladies in Atlanta — of those young la- 
dies of wealth and position, who were to be 
society women, without religion — her heart 
was burdened for them ; and busy as she 
was with her school and mission w r ork, she 
always found time to meet with them in the 
afternoon meetings, go to them, talk with 
them, and pray audibly for them. The re- 
sult was they were all converted. That Sun- 
day-school is a sad failure which sends out 
its children unconverted into a sinful world. 
It ought not to be so, it need not be so. 
O that I could say it will not longer be so ! 



Sunday-school Work* [03 

This work is not likely to be dour by a 
teacher who is unconverted, or who 1 

pot live close to God. The teacher who 
has charge of a Sunday-school class wi 

out a true idea of the importance of the 
work in which he is engaged, and who does 
not feel that he has been divinely called to 
do it, and do it well, is sadly out of place. 
Souls are in his care, and for them he is to 
give account; and I cannot too earnestly 
urge him to consecrate himself to God and 
to seek the baptism of the HolySpirit, with- 
out which all his work will be ineffective. 
That teacher w^ho wisely wins the souls of 
those committed to his care shall have the 
rich rew r ard of heavenly peace on earth 
and of heaven above. Suppose a very zeal- 
ous teacher of a class of boys, from ten to 
twelve years old — bovs full of mischief, and 
some of them very wicked — should suddenly 
address the w r orst and say in a tone of great 
solemnity: "James, do you want to go to 



104 Childhood and Conversion. 

hell? You are on the way there now. Don't 
you think you ought to stop and become a 
Christian?" You might expect Jim to re- 
spond in such a way as to make the class 
roar and the teacher angry. Skillful, affec- 
tionate, private conversation is what children 
need, and, as far as my observation goes, 
what they don't get. 

Earnest prayer for each member of the 
class. Specific pleading will not be unat- 
tended with great blessing. The teachers 
must do for their classes what the superin- 
tendent does for the whole school. After 
completing the lesson, they should often 
ask about those doctrines which must be 
known in order to trust in Jesus. They are 
not many, and are very simple. "You are 
a sinner, and need a Saviour. Jesus is your 
Saviour. You must repent and trust in him 
if you expect to be saved." Talk to chil- 
dren about their personal religion, however, 
ought always to be in private. Children 



Sunday-school II Ork . 






are exceedingly sensitive, and the) are verj 
unwilling to show publicly their true feelings 
on this subject. And a public inquiry ad- 
dressed to a boy in a promiscuous as embly 

in which he is singled out will always do 
harm. ' 




CHAPTER XVI. 

THE WAY TO SECURE THE CONVERSION OF 
CHILDREN THE FAMILY. 

perhaps ought to have put first in or- 
i der of time the family as the great in- 
strument in God's hand of securing the con- 
version and religious development of the 
children, for no agency is so powerful. To 
substitute for the home influence any other 
would be an error of the most deadly kind. 
A religious child may spring from a godless 
household, but it is a rare exception. It is 
sadly true that godless children do come out 
of godly families, but it is also a truth that 
the larger part of the truly pious come from 
homes of pietv. I am not. however, in this 
volume speaking of family government in its 
wide sweep as much as of the influence of 

parents in securing the earlv conversion of 
(106) 



t Family* 

the children. Ii this is done, the parents 
themselves, especially the mothers, must be 
genuinely, consistently, and attractively re- 
ligious. They must have religion, and it 

must be of the right kind. A mere form oi 
godliness, a religion oi* mere opinion, a re- 
ligion of sensibility, and even a religion of 
conscience, will have comparatively little 

power; but a religion of love to God, such 
as Moses enjoined upon the parents at Ho- 
reb, where, before he gave instructions to 
teach, he said, "Thou shalt love the Lord 
thy God with all thy heart and soul and 
strength," will be almost omnipotent. "All 
our teaching will be comparatively in vain 
if it is not backed up by a good example. 
The parent must teach. The Sunday-school 
cannot take the mother's place. Before the 
little one is old enough to go to the Sundav- 
school the mother should tell it the story of 
the cross. The child should be carefully 
instructed in the first catechism. Feeling 



ioS Childhood and Conversion. 

the need for a Methodist catechism simple 
enough for children of very tender years, I 
prepared an" Infant's Catechism "of twelve 
lessons, published by J. W. Burke & Co. 
and Barbee & Smith. The answers are very 
short, the questions plain. A second cat- 
echism for older children follows. The 
" Infant's Life of Jesus " is intended as an 
historical study on Jesus' life. I think these 
little books meet a want. The parent should 
use some simple manuals like these and teach 
these lessons before the child goes to the 
infant class in the Sunday-school. I am not 
at all sure it is wisest or best to send chil- 
dren under five years old, or at least under 
four, to the Sunday-school at all; and I am 
sure it is not when they are not taught at 
home. The family altar, morning and even- 
ing prayer, prepares the child for an early 
conversion, and without that we may have 
little expectation of it. The parent who is 
too busy and too unconcerned to pray for 



The Family. [09 

his children may not expect the child to 
have much concern about his salvation him- 
self. Prayer with children in the closet will 
help this work forward. If the mother has 
a closet and lakes her little ones into it, then 
she may rely upon their going into their 
own. And co-operation with the Church in 
her efforts to save the children is an abso- 
lute essential. 

The giving the child to God in holy bap- 
tism, the teaching and government of the 
little one, the impressing upon the child of 
its need of a Saviour, should begin in the 
family, and never should there come a time 
when the work of Christian nurture should 
cease. The pastor can do much, the Sun- 
day-school can do much, but the parent has 
more power than all combined. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

CARE FOR THE LAMBS. 

fHE Church is the mother. The children 
who always belonged to the kingdom of 
heaven, when by a true conversion they are 
adopted into the family of God, need a 
mother's tender care. They are lambs who 
need the Shepherd's keeping. They are 
babes who need to be fed with the sincere 
milk of the word. The grain of mustard- 
seed sends up its little blade, and it is scarce- 
ly to be seen ; but let a tender care be given 
to it, and it becomes a great herb. The lamb 
is the most helpless and delicate, but ten- 
derly cared for it becomes the chief of the 
flock. How shall we nurture the children? 
what plan can be devised whereby these 
young Christians may be kept from back- 
sliding? That they may backslide is too 
(110) 



( '(//-(- for the Lath i 1 i 

sadly o\ uK-nt to demand proof; that they 
do, is fearfully true. 

It is a fact, however, despite all the 
difficulties in the way, that more children 
who profess religion in childhood grow up 
to be steadfast Christians than any other 
class ; but it is painfully true that many who 
begin a religious life in childhood do not con- 
tinue to lead it. What can we do to prevent 
this result? Just what we do to prevent 
the backsliding of other babes in Christ. In 
order to prevent their backsliding they must 
be brought forward ; but this advice would be 
too general. I am sure that the pastor might 
do a great deal for the protection of the 
lambs of his flock, w r hich none but a pastor 
could do. Besides the sermons from the 
pulpit addressed to them, besides the good 
books he places in their hands, besides the 
kindly counsel he gives them in every-day 
intercourse, he ought to have a special class 
of children, and with them hold a class-meet- 



ii2 Childhood and Conversion. 

ing. How to conduct it will be a matter 
which he alone can decide, but I have found 
this to be a good plan : 

On Saturday morning I had the children 
to meet together; we sung and prayed in 
concert; we then read in concert a chapter 
of the Bible, and as we read a verse at a time 
I gave such comments as I thought best, 
all of a practical kind. Say the subject sug- 
gested was private prayer, as would be the 
case in reading Matthew vi. I would talk 
about the closet and how a little child should 
pray, how often and for what; and then I 
would have a free and informal talk with each 
one about his habits of prayer, and his relig- 
ious life generally. Then we would sing and 
pray and disperse. The service can be made 
very profitable and very interesting. 

Neglect of children received into the 
Church is a crying sin, and the pastor 
who fails to care for them has a fearful 
account to render. 



( \irc for the Lambs. 113 

The Sunday-school teacher ought to be 

the pastor's main assistant in this work. 
The teacher knows his class — knows who 
are members of the Church, who have been 
converted. He does not have so large a 
class that he cannot see after them, and it is 
in his power to watch over their souls with 
a care no other can show. Bishop Mc- 
Tyeire once said to me: "I have, I think, 
the solution of the class-meeting problem. 
We cannot do as much as we wish to do, so 
we cannot bring back the old-time class- 
meeting; but if we will turn the attention of 
Sunday-school teachers in this direction, we 
will have something better. The teacher 
meets the class regularly. He knows them 
all. He does not have too many. Now let 
him be expected to watch over their souls ; 
and if he is in earnest, how effectually he 
can do so ! " This is practicable, but this will 
require a high order of Christian grace and 
of zeal for the Lord's service. It is not a 



114 Childhood and Conversion. 

burdensome requirement; and if the Sun- 
day-school teacher realized his responsibil- 
ity, it would be done. 

But the young Christian, like the little 
babe, is better cared for in the sacred pre- 
cincts of the home. Nothing can supplant 
the home. Thank God, our favored South- 
ern land is a land of homes, and in these 
sacred castles the father and mother are 
chief rulers. They are the high-priests, 
and they make their offerings for the chil- 
dren. They are God's appointed teachers, 
and, loving him with all their heart, they are 
prepared to bring their children up for God. 
Away out in the fens of Lincolnshire, with 
a rude peasantry on either side of them, with 
neither culture nor religion in their parish- 
ioners, Samuel and Susanna Wesley were 
living. Here they brought up their large 
family of girls and boys. Every one of them 
who reached mature years became eminent- 
ly religious, and such a triad of gifted men 



( % are for the Lambs* \ 15 

and ministers as Samuel, John, and Charles 
Wesley, her sons, the world has seldom 
seen. Her method of training her chil- 
dren was this: They were taught obedience 
early, before they could talk: as soon as 
they could speak they were taught the Lord's 
Prayer, and made to repeat it twice a day; 
then the catechism and some portion of 
Scripture ; they were taught to be quiet at 
family prayers, and at five years old to read 
the Bible. She says: "I resolved to begin 
with my own children, so I take such pro- 
portion of time as to talk to each child by 
itself on something that relates to its spirit- 
ual concern. On Monday I talk with Mol- 
ly, on Tuesday with Hetty, Wednesday with 
Nancy, Thursdav with Jacky, Saturday with 
Charles, and with Emilv and Sukey on Sun- 
day." At that time John Wesley was ten 
and Charles was only four. Without fam- 
ily religion, there is little hope that the del- 
icate Christian infant will survive. It would 



n6 Childhood and Conversion, 

require a volume to say what parents should 
do for the religious nurture of their children, 
and perhaps no man could wisely direct; but 
one thing is certain, without government, 
without restraint, without correction, no fal- 
lible child is likely to advance in Christian ^ 
life, however genuine may be the work of 
grace in his heart. The praying mother, 
the godly father, who have given their chil- 
dren to God, are not likely to be at a loss to 
know what ought to be done to help them 
onward. 

I have not said all that ought to be said, 
but all that I can say now. The vastest in- 
terests are depending on the proper solu- 
tion of the problem I have here considered. 
No question ranks that w r hich asks, "Can 
children be brought into Christ's fold in 
early childhood, and kept there?" 

I say they can. Will they be ? That de- 
pends. 

THE END. 




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